John Quincy Adams Quotes

It is possible for one never to transgress a single law and still be a bastard.

It is our unhappiness, in this time of danger, to have too many Calvinistic politicians, who seem to think their country will be saved by good words and warm faith, without concomitant exploits …

It is not just family that must transmit values, but school also.

You don't need a city charter to know that education is the foundation of any community.

There is an old saying that you're a product of your environment. Parents can only do so much when eight hours of the day is spent at school. As parents, we try to teach our kids to be respectful to others and teach them old values, but a lot of it is down to the schools.

America is becoming so educated that ignorance will be a novelty. I will belong to the select few.

In England only uneducated people show off their knowledge; nobody quotes Latin or Greek authors in the course of conversation, unless he has never read them.

We can make mayors and officers every year, but not scholars.

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.

In the long run, the public interest depends on private virtue.

the superiority of state over private education lies in the fact that in the former the teacher is responsible to society... The result desired by the state is a wholly different one from that desired by parents, guardians, and pupils.

If you want young people to take right and wrong seriously, you must put them in the presence of people who take right and wrong seriously.

I know but one code of morality for man whether acting singly or collectively. He who says I will be a rogue when I act in company with a hundred others, but an honest man when I act alone, will be believed in the former assertion, but not in the latter.

It is very unfair to expect a politician to live in private up to the statements he makes in public.

In deciding the ratings of the films, no consideration is given to artistic, technical or dramatic values. Only moral content is weighed.

He is guilty if he wastes the money of the people, the taxes which they have paid, in luxury, pomp, and debauchery. He who should improve the morals of the people, be the guardian of the law, and improve their education should not pervert them by his bad example.

Everything we do as teachers has moral overtones.

I don't think morality can be decided on the private level. I think you need public guidance and public support for a moral consensus. The average person has to know instinctively, without thinking too much about it, how he should raise his children.

I suppose that an honest man shines more in politics than he does elsewhere.

It is proper to demand more from the man with exceptional advantages than from the man without them… To the great body of men who have had exceptional advantages in the way of educational facilities we have a right, then, to look for good service to the state.

We ought never to do wrong when anyone is looking.

Education proceeds ultimately from the patterns furnished by institutions, customs, and laws.

No one can quarrel with those who desire to maintain the theatre on a proper moral plane, but we are seeing too much in the world today of an effort to regulate too minutely by law the lives and morals of whole groups of people.

The ages of greatest public spirit are not always eminent for private virtue.

A Bible and a newspaper in every house, a good school in every district ... are the principle support of virtue, morality and civil liberty.